BEMINE hypothesizes that the current MALPE work has several problems that hinder it from gaining strategic and integrative foresight in steering Finnish city-regional development towards a more sustainable future. This is due to the lack of knowledge on the urbanization dynamics, lack of concepts and models of urban phenomena, and failures in dealing with crucial institutional path dependencies and institutional ambiguity.

BeMInE aims to bridge these gaps by:

Producing knowledge on the dynamic interconnections between agglomeration, migration and mobility, and innovation activity processes, and peri-urbanization and fragmentation processes of Finnish urbanization.

Re-conceptualizing and – modelling urban phenomena and development, in order to support city-regional planning and decision making.

Providing insights and policy recommendations on the restructuring of governance relations and rationalities in the MALPE work, in view of the ongoing Finnish local and regional governance reform and related challenges.

Providing related insights on how to unravel the institutional ambiguities of MALPE governance and manage their consequences to political legitimacy.

The project aims to enable capacity for developing and evaluating different development scenarios of sustainable Finnish urbanization and regionalization.

The expected results from BeMInE are threefold:

Analysis and findings for supporting decision-making.

Direct policy and planning recommendations.

Delivering a practical strategic decision-support toolkit.

In addition, the project results will be documented in scientific publications and in broad audience publication channels.